Commando City: A World at War Novel (World at War Online Book 7)

by Mitchell T. Jacobs

“I hear you Bravo Wolf.”

  “Good. What are your orders?”

  “Are you under attack?”

  “No, but I'm willing to bet that the Valkyries are going to be back soon. I thought this was too convenient.”

  Too convenient indeed, Zach thought as he looked down at the map. Bravo Wolf was lines up along the northern part of the marina, their backs to the water. And if the enemy decided to strike back…

  “Aw, crap,” he said aloud, half to himself.

  “What?”

  Zach realized he had just broadcast his exclamation over the radio link. “Danny, can you get in contact with Selene?”

  “Not over the radio, like I said, and any runner I send is probably going to get themselves killed.”

  Zach hesitated for a moment, then made his decision. “Fall back to the Lake Park, if you can. I'll try to route the rest of the landing force there if they can move, but don't count on it.”

  “Got it, but what about the rest of you?”

  “We'll think of something. Try to secure the beach, at least. I might have an idea, but it's going to be a desperation move.”

  “Uh, that sounds like fun.”

  “Yeah, I know. Do your best,” Zach ordered.

  He looked back at the carnage occurring at the marina, wondering what to do. Zach needed to make a decision, and fast, but what would it be? A wrong choice could spell disaster.

  * * *

  The Gazelle force had almost linked up with Spectre when the hammer blow fell on them. Ragnarok troops suddenly surged out of buildings and alleyway, putting them under a hail of fire. Half of their infantry were wiped out in the span of a few seconds, and Nora heard dozens, maybe hundreds of bullets pinging off their hull.

  The enemy fire had become so intense that Anna was forced to duck inside of the turret, depriving them of their machine guns. That left Nora as their only good offensive weapon. She traversed the turret and pulled the trigger, raking anything and everything that crossed her sights. There was no question of overkill or conserving ammunition. Right now they either killed the enemy or would end up dead themselves.

  “Where the heck did these come from?” Liz said over the radio link. She kept the Gazelle moving down the street, providing shelter for the few surviving infantry.

  “It's probably part of their plan,” Anna said.

  Nora agreed. They had been listening to enough of the radio chatter to know what was going on elsewhere. And if they didn't do something to counter Ragnarok's move they'd be goners.

  “We can't just stay here,” she said. “We have to break out somehow.”

  “Yeah, but do you have any non-suicidal ideas?” Liz asked

  “Pretty much all ideas are suicidal at this point.” She rotated the turret and gunned down an enemy trying to aim an RPG at them. “Maybe our best bet is to make a quick run for the northern half of the district.”

  “What, and leave our infantry behind just like that?”

  “They can ride on the back,” Nora said. “Yeah, it might be tough, but we're going to get ourselves killed if we stay here much longer.”

  “We're going to have to make a decision soon,” Liz warned.

  Anna didn't respond for a moment, before her voice rang out over the radio. “Allen, we're making a break for it. Get your squad on the back of the Gazelle and hang on. This is going to be a rough ride.”

  “Understood. We'll tell you when we're set.”

  “Bear in mind that means we can't fire back,” Nora warned. With so many troops clinging to the back she couldn't traverse the turret without knocking some of them off with the gun barrel.

  “That's fine. Speed's going to be the only thing that saves us now. Hope your driving skills us up to snuff, Liz.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you can come down here and drive if you don't like it.”

  Nora had to smile despite the situation. Even in the middle of a brutal fight they were able to keep the banter going, even if it was probably just to calm their nerves.

  She heard a series of clunks on the rear of the Gazelle.

  “We're on,” Allen said.

  “Hold on tight,” Liz warned, then revved the motor. A second later the Gazelle sped up the street, rapidly picking up speed.

  Nora felt a twinge of guilt at leaving Spectre behind, but there was nothing they could do about it. If they stayed they'd be dead anyhow, so the only real choice was to retreat to fight another day.

  If they made it, that was.

  * * *

  Bombs continued to scream down, throwing up dirt, debris, vegetation, bodies. Selene and a few of the others clung to the ground, desperately trying to avoid the storm of explosions and shrapnel swirling around them. She didn't know how badly her unit was faring, but judging by the amount of punishment raining down on them they weren't going to be in any shape to fight, let alone secure the beachhead.

  And then the screaming suddenly stopped. Selene kept her head down for a few seconds, not quite daring to raise it to look around for fear of another bomb. But once the eerie silence spread across the battlefield she picked herself up to survey the carnage.

  The marina lay in flames, the docks twisted and broken by the onslaught of explosions. Wrecked boats lay scattered about. And then there were the bodies. The bodies. Bobbing up and down in the water, strewn about on the beaches, the dead lay everywhere. Forget her company, she might not even have a platoon left.

  Selene was about to activate her radio when she heard a battlecry rise from the direction of the city. She fumbled around with her harness, trying to free her bayonet.

  As she fixed her blade she glanced up toward the direction of the sound. Sure enough, one look confirmed her worst fears. Enemy troops charged toward her position, blades fixed and shining in the sun.

  The Valkyries were coming to finish them off.

  * * *

  “Danny, we're under attack and pinned down,” Logan said over the radio. “I don't think we're going to be able to withdraw.”

  Danny frowned. “Do you need us to wheel around and support?”

  “No, you come this way and you're going to get stuck here too. Keep falling back. We'll hold them off.”

  “OK then. Good luck.”

  Logan snorted. “No luck here. We'll just try to kill as many of them as possible.”

  And that's where they were right now, Danny thought sourly. Running away with their tail between their legs while the rest of the battalion simply tried to go down swinging. All their planning, all their effort and their enemies had still gotten the better of them.

  But he couldn't dwell on that right now. They needed to get to the relative safety of the Lake Park, and that was still a ways off.

  Danny activated his radio. “All units outside of Logan's squad, keep moving toward the Lake Park. We need to get there to make sure we can keep a foothold in the district.”

  Would they get another chance after a disaster like this, though?

  * * *

  “If you get ashore can you fight guerrilla style?” Zach asked Gray over the link. “Enough to keep them busy?”

  “Yeah we can, but where's our landing zone?”

  Zach took another glance at the map. “The beach around the Lake Park.”

  “If we slow down the garrison around the hospital is going to shoot us up. There's no cover there,” Gray protested.

  “Then make a quick run and offload as fast as you can. Beach the boats if you have to, just make sure you get onshore and into the district.”

  “Do you really want to hand them over to the enemy? Ragnarok's going to come for them as soon as they figure out we just abandoned them.”

  “Then blow them up in the middle of the night,” Zach said tersely. “Just get on shore and into the Lake Park so we can keep our foothold in the district.”

  “Understood,” Gray said, just before the Redd Foxx section pulled away.

  “Zach, what do you want us to do?” Robbie asked.

  He looked aro
und at his scant force, just a few river craft and the helicopter gunships circling above. At this point they had no hope of extracting Selene's company, and the amount of support they could give Redd Foxx would be limited at best.

  “My force, withdraw back to Waukegan,” he said, frustration mounting. Once again, the Valkyries had beaten them bloody.

  * * *

  They had no hope of winning.

  Selene knew that very well as she fired burst after burst into the enemy horde, cutting down several. Caught out in the open with little support and few numbers, the only thing her unit could do was to take as many enemies with them as possible before they were all killed.

  As the Valkyries closed the distance she charged forward to meet them, rifle and bayonet at the ready. She dodged a blade and lunged forward, thrusting her point into an enemy's chest. Selene yanked her bayonet out and whirled it in a rapid arc, slashing another foe across the throat and forcing another to step back.

  But it was like trying to stop a raging flood with just a bucket. For every enemy she killed or wounded, five more took their place. And then their close-combat prowess started to shine through.

  Selene was engaged with another Ragnarok trooper when she felt something punch into her ballistic vest, knocking her off balance. She struggled to regain her composure, trying to protect herself while looking for the source of the attack. Someone had probably shot her with a pistol at close range, not enough to penetrate her vest, but enough to hurt.

  But there were too many Valkyries around her. A rifle butt smashed into the side of her neck, knocking her loopy for a moment and sending her even more off balance. Selene tried to regain her bearings when she felt something pierce her side. Then another. Then another. Then another.

  She didn't even have time to fall before the world around her went black.

  You are KIA.

  15

  What Now?

  “Failure again, huh?” David asked. He, Zach and Gina looked over the holographic map table, trying to come up with some sort of solution to the latest setback.

  “Yeah,” Zach responded, feel the frustration boiling within him.

  The rest of the alliance was making progress. Dragon Battalion had three quarters of the St. Francis District in hand, including part of the northern sector. That had allowed Magic Battalion to begin their assault on the Jones Harbor District.

  But then there was Ghost, bloodied, beaten and becoming weaker and weaker by the fight. Zach had gone over the numbers from yesterday's absolute disaster, possible worse than the paradrop.

  They had lost almost two thirds of their river craft, either destroyed in the dive bombing raids or beached in an attempt to get Redd Foxx ashore. At least the second part had gone relatively smoothly, and they now had a more than a company of troops in Shorewood, based at the Lake Park. But with so many enemies present there was little they could do at the moment except raiding and scouting.

  The Gazelle force had managed to link up with the others, running through a gauntlet of intense fire at full speed. That at least meant they still had the long-range radio operational, but Zach wondered just how effective a single vehicle could be. Much to his surprise, Spectre still clung doggedly to the art museum, though how much longer they could hold out was becoming increasingly doubtful.

  But the amphibious force had suffered the worst casualties during the fight. Most had been shredded during the dive bombing raid, torn apart by the hail of fragmentation bombs. The few that survived the initial onslaught had been overwhelmed by the subsequent Valkyrie assault and were slaughtered in close-quarters combat.

  Zach had the nasty suspicion that they had walked right into an enemy trap. At the very least their enemy had a good contingency plan in place, and it showed. Once again Ghost Battalion was fragmented, wounded and without a clear sense of direction. How were they going to find a way to salvage this?

  “I guess we can thank you,” Gina said.

  “Thank us how?”

  “The last assault in St. Francis. The one that happened yesterday,” David elaborated. “We had to deal with some artillery fire, but nothing too serious. There weren't any challenges to us in the air, so we were able to advance pretty quickly.”

  “If there weren't any Ragnarok planes in the air over the district, then why couldn't our fighters have been diverted to our problem?” he snapped.

  “Sorry,” David said, his hands up.

  Zach took a breath. “Sorry about that. Just frustrated.”

  “Well, I don't blame you,” Gina spoke up. “Losing like that has to be tough.”

  “That's really not helping me feel any better.”

  “At any rate,” David cut in, “you now have a company on the ground along with an understrength platoon. That might give you some options, if they can just expand the beachhead.”

  Zach looked back down at the map. “Well, that's going to be tough. They're right between two of the major garrison strongpoints, and if they take out the southern one they're going to have to face the Valkyries.”

  “So head north.”

  “That's going to come with its own set of problems. If they push north there's only one good landing spot, and that's right next to the university.”

  “Isn't that the capture point?” Gina asked.

  “Exactly. Having a significant number of troops moving around the area is going to provoke the garrison, and their counterattack forces are going to be a lot stronger than usual.”

  “But then you'll end up having to go south, which isn't any better,” David pointed out. “Are there any better choices that come to mind, or is it just pick your poison?”

  Zach frowned and looked down at the map again. “There's one way. We could try to perform a helicopter landing at some point, but that's going to be extremely dangerous too. Unless we get a huge amount of air cover then we're going to get jumped by fighters and slaughtered. And since we fly a lot slower in helicopters than in transport planes, it's going to get really bad.”

  “But if you got the air cover, could you pull that off?” Gina asked, seemingly interested at the prospect.

  “Sure we could, but is that even a possibility or are you just saying things?”

  David spoke up. “It's not just a matter of shifting resources. We have to stay on schedule, and a well-timed counterattack could ruin that. Ragnarok's already used a lot of their rocket artillery, so their best weapon against us is their dive bombers. That means we need air cover to counter that.”

  “And putting air cover over your forces means that you're protected, and they'll probably look elsewhere.” Zach felt a twinge of anger. “I see. So we're serving as cannon fodder to draw their attention north while you complete your objectives.”

  “I wouldn't put it that way-” Gina began.

  Zach cut her off. “I was wondering why the military council was so insistent that we keep fighting in the district even with the losses we were taking. Now it makes perfect sense.”

  “We still think you can win,” David said.

  Zach laughed mirthlessly. “Oh come on, what about the past two attempts makes you think we can win? We lost a huge amount of equipment both times and got completely slaughtered. Do you honestly give us much of a change in the next go around?”

  “I do,” David said. “And that's not hyperbole either. You've pulled off crazy stunts in the past, so I'm confident you'll be able to do something this time.”

  “Meanwhile, we're taking a pounding,” Zach said. He paused for a moment, mostly to calm himself a bit. “Look, I can see why you'd choose to do it this way. I know we're drawing valuable resources and troops away from the main areas of fighting, and that's probably helping you a lot.”

  “That is one of the side effects,” Gina admitted. “Not that we don't think you can take the place, but it's always good to hedge our bets.”

  “Right, but this is starting to become a habit, and it's not going over well,” Zach reminded them. “There was the time we were se
nt up to Green Bay as a distraction force, the time we were deployed as raiders when we were preparing for the Indianapolis attack… Should I keep naming them?”

  “No, we get the point,” David said. “So the feeling is that you're being used as expendable cannon fodder?”

  “Well, what else would you think?” Zach asked. “We're being thrown into the grinder and taking heavy losses in battles we can't win or the outcome is very doubtful, and we're supposed to take it like that? I realize there's value in being a distraction force, but a lot of the others don't like it. And what am I supposed to do if a bunch of them up and quit?”

  “Do you think that's a danger?” Gina asked. “Or is that just speculation for now?”

  “We're still solid, but people are getting frustrated,” Zach told her. “It's not just that we're losing. A lot of people feel that we're getting hung out to dry. The plan was way too ambitious in the first place, and we're suffering for it.”

  “OK, I get that.”

  “So what are we going to do about it? We can't keep going like this, because we're going to be crippled for months if we continue,” Zach argued.

  Troop losses hurt and put them out of action for days or weeks, but material losses hurt even more. Ghost Battalion's materiel losses in the last battle had been devastating. The number of river craft destroyed obviously hurt, but the smaller items would begin to put a strain on their logistics system as well. Assault rifles, grenades, ammunition, combat gear, all of those needed to be replaced, and their stocks weren't infinite. A few more battles like this and they could run out of critical supplies at the wrong time.

  “It's going to depend on the progress we make in the other districts,” David said flatly. “I'm sorry to say, but capturing the Shorewood District doesn't mean much if we don't get our hands on the other two first. So priority has to go to those ones first.”

  That was the answer he feared, but at this point Zach was completely resigned to it. Nothing seemed to be going right for them in the battle for Milwaukee. Black Wolf kept taking blow after blow, constantly coming out the worse for wear. How much more could they take before they completely cracked?